TWO AGAINST ONE - TWICE

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This week's The Record: Europe was on biased form again.
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There were two discussions.
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The first was on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, another EU-built Trojan horse against national traditions. Or at least that's the view of one of presenter Shirin Wheeler's guests - Jan Zahradil of the Czech centre-right ODS. Against him were pitted two strong supporters of the Charter - the Green Jean Lambert and the German Social Democrat Joe Leinen. Quite why it was necessary to have two supporters of the Charter - and both of them from the Left - escapes me (and when one was speaking the other was nodding his/her head in agreement!)
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Jean Lambert was asked the first question and given the last word (I.C. of 0). The lovely Shirin asked her such testing questions as "Why has the Parliament been such a champion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights" and "So what are we to make of this?"
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Centre-right Jan was not so lucky. He was asked "And that is very explicit actually, isn't it, Jan Zahradil, there are no extra rights conferred by this? This is just a question of bringing things together. So why all the fuss in the Czech Republic and Britain?" (A fuss, eh?) Then when Socialist Joe complained about "forces" who are trying to "confuse the public", Shirin turned to Jan and (pointing her pencil at him) said, "Is that you?"
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The second discussion turned to the new powers accrued to Europe by the Lisbon Treaty. Here we had two ardent Europhiles, an attractive Dutch liberal Sophie In't Veld and a Danish Social Democrat called Dan Jorgensen, pitted against our own Paul Nuttall of UKIP. You won't be surprised that the only one Shirin Wheeler interrupted was Mr Nuttall (I.C. of 0.7). She stopped his protest against the scandal of Ireland's try-better-this-time second referendum with the words "OK, but we're not talking about the referendum here, we're talking about actually the policy and trying to understand if it really is going to be as devastating as people say." She then passed the baton on to the pro-Lisbon Mr Jorgensen.
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When Paul Nuttall came under fire from the lovely Sophie, Shirin did not intervene. Later, when Dan Joregensen came under fire from Paul, she did intervene: "Just finish your point Dan. I'll come back to you Paul." When Dan finished his point, we saw Paul Nuttall open his mouth and start of the first syllable of a reply when in crashed the 'Record: Europe' theme and graphics and...that was that!!
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